Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Saturday, July 20, 2002

You Live, you Learn - It's not a secret - I was Democrat until I was about twenty or so. I wrote a party platform for 1980 North Dakota Boy's State that reads like a Leninist call to action.

Reading Solzhenitzyn's "Gulag", Paul Johnson's "Modern Times", and PJ O'Rourke's various essays (and "Republican Party Reptile") started a short but intense swing to the right that I'm still living.

But I did manage to retain one vestige of my former left-wing self; in high school, I saw Phyllis Schlafly on TV several times, and read some of her stuff - and, as a knee-jerk leftist, hated her. I regarded her as a doddering old ninny, as Jerry Falwell without the jowls. That was, of course, the impression that was more or less foisted on me by my liberal friends, acquaintances and family members - and of course, the left is all about denigration rather than engagement.

And it only recently occurred to me to even try to change my own mind about Ms. Schlafly. I read some of her writing. And I finally realized - 20 years late - what Ann Coulter tells us today.

Overpowered By Gore - Jonah Goldberg on the near-inevitability of another Gore candidacy.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/20/2002 08:24:24 AM

Friday, July 19, 2002

Penny-Wise, Pound Foolish - Tim Penny, along with Dean Barkley, has always been one of the wizards behind the curtain in the Emerald Palace of the Ventura Administration.

And once upon a time, his moderate-DFL ideas seemed intrigueing to me, as a conservative. His book seemed to indicate his mind was at least open to some common-sense conservative ideas - he was skeptical of the DFL Sacrament of Abortion, he said Gun Control was just plain ineffective, and he seemed to be a genuine "moderate" - whatever that is - on fiscal issues. At least his association with the Cato Institute on fiscal matters seemed mildly encouraging to some of us small-"L" libertarians.

So for those of us who've been calling the Independence Party "DFL Lite", seeing how the Penny candidacy would shake out has been an interesting waiting game.

But not any more. He's scuttled away from his relatively courageous and intelligent stances on many issues - away and to the left. He's still DFL Lite, but not all that Lite anymore. He'd probably fit into the DFL, still.

And people think he'll steal votes from Pawlenty? Only among people who don't think very hard about these things - in other words, among those who elected Ventura in the first place. Who weren't going to vote for Pawlenty, or Moe, or (I suspect) Tim Penny either.

Hillary! Blasts Off - Senator Hillary! Rodham-Clinton, authoritarian-Democrat from New York, seems to be touchy about the real-world implications of the Russ Feingold's Speech Rationing bill.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/19/2002 08:50:56 AM

But Bush is Tainted... - Howard Kurtz, in the NY Post, on the NY Times' undisclosed interests in and involvement with Enron.

As Andrew Sullivan said about this piece:
Not only have New York Times columnists, like Paul Krugman, had sweet-heart consulting deals with Enron, but the Times itself is knee-deep in Enron collusion. Howie reveals that the Times has had a 5-year "newsprint swap" deal with Enron that it has never disclosed in all its hyper-ventilating editorials on the subject. He also reveals that - oh joy! - the Times has practised exactly the same stock options maneuver that it has so piously attacked others for. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the mega-rich kid who finances Howell Raines' diatribes against corporate executives, has almost $2 million worth of stock options that are not counted as expenses and Times president Russell Lewis says the Times has no plans to alter its policies. Don't you think the Times should practise what it preaches in this respect? Then there's this column in the New York Post, criticizing the Times' front-page denigration of the rival plans to rebuild the WTC site, without disclosing its own corporate interest in keeping office space limited in New York City, given its massive investment in new midtown offices. So let's check this out: president Bush is tainted because of corporate corruption scandals but the Times, which has been deeply involved with Enron and doesn't count stock options as expenses, is squeaky clean. Those guys on 43d Street are as self-righteous as they are full of it.

I was going to say "the big media everywhere is deeply involved in such back-room sweetheart deals" - but it's not even just the big media.

I remember at my first radio gig in North Dakota, in 1979 - a job that was 50% disk jockey and 50% news - when the station's owner and manager said "The official policy of this station is to support the Garrison Diversion Project [a '70's era project to divert Missouri River water to eastern North Dakota for irrigation - a pork-fest of the most immense proportions], and our news coverage will reflect that support." Of course, every businessman in my little hometown stood to benefit handsomely from the project's side-effects. But then, most people there did...

But if you scratch the surface of the NY TImes' coverage of Enron, or the Star/Trib's reportage on Light Rail, or the Pioneer Press' on the St. Paul Twins stadium, you'll find just such unstated self-interest behind the facade of detachment.

And those who do know this need to get busy teaching everyone else...

posted by Mitch Berg 7/19/2002 08:40:31 AM

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Summertime, and the Living is Off-Line - AT&T Broadband has screwed up my home connection. I'm a little reticent about blogging from work. And I'm going to be out of town until Friday.

Which is when this blog will next be updated.

See you then!
posted by Mitch Berg 7/17/2002 12:28:08 PM

Monday, July 15, 2002

Is Phyllis Kahn Involved? - In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, you must get a license to prevent your bike from being stolen - or the police will steal it for you.
'It's a preventative measure," said Mayor Jim Naugle. "Instead of after crimes take place, it's something you can do to prevent the crime from taking place."
So - to prevent the crime, you make the crime mandatory?

I'm waiting for Representative Kahn to extend this from bike theft to robbery, aggravated assault or murder.

Make sure Jay Benanav doesn't see this.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/15/2002 07:12:53 AM

Is it Minnesota? Or is it Europe? Who can tell, sometimes?

The buro-wonks at the European Union continue their war on all that is wrong with the world with full frontal assault...

...on Happy Hour?

That's right. The US is wrong for attacking the terrorists, according to the EU, because the proposal to do so wasn't submitted in quintuplicate by the deadline of September 10, 2001. But Happy Hour? Mon Dieu!
Socialists in the European Parliament claim big bar chains lose money on happy hours simply to crush rival pubs that can’t afford discounts. The proposal has raised the ire of British conservatives, but the U.K.’s Labor government may back the measure. Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth said happy hours "encourage the wrong type of drinking."

Apparently the UK Home Office is worried that more Brits aren't doing the right type of drinking - presumably involving public vomiting and beating Italians with chains after soccer matches.

Stick with the Greens, people - this could be us in a few years.

posted by Mitch Berg 7/15/2002 07:03:41 AM

Harken Ye to the TV - Byron York on the very suspicious timing of the Harken allegations against the President.

Speaking of which - isn't it odd that, when Judicial Watch was launching lawsuits agaisnt President Clinton, they were minimized as part of a "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy", and never quite cracked the front page of the New York Times? And yet now that they're involved in the Harken action against Bush, suddenly they're front-page material?

Who'da thunk it?
posted by Mitch Berg 7/15/2002 06:56:48 AM

European Morality - Victor Herbert on why the International Criminal Court is a just-plain-bad idea.

It's not just the third-world tinhorns. No, it's our European allies. The entire continent - or at least its entire ruling buro-wonk class - has a very topsy-turvy conception of right and wrong.

It'd be pretty standard mushy-moderate, PC fare at this point for me to say "Yeah, so do we, too, but...". But I'm not going to do that. Because in any meaningful sense, there is no comparison.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/15/2002 06:52:39 AM

Sunday, July 14, 2002

PC, Worldwide - The tendency of the PC Media to omit all reference to an offender's race or other information (unless the alleged offender is right-of-center politically) is irritating and dangerous.

But it's not just an American phenomenon.

In Sydney, Australia, a group of Lebanese immigrants were convicted (or confessed) to systematically gang-raping Australian women, in a manner that was nothing if not purely racist. And the Australian media airbrushed all reference to the racist elements of their acts, or their ethnicity, from the story.

Well - almost all of the Australian media...
posted by Mitch Berg 7/14/2002 02:32:26 PM

Greens See Red - In another example of how the Green Party is beating itself into irrelevance everywhere but Minneapolis, the Finnish government has opted to open a new nuclear power plant. Some of you who are my age may recall nuclear power - clean, safe, relatively cheap...

The Greens in Finland left the government in a huff (it's a parliamentary thing) over the power plant. A majority of Finns seem to have said "dooon't leet the dooor hiiiit yyyyou on the buuut on the wayyy ouuut".

So the choice the Greens had was: Cheap power that doesn't have to be imported, to support the economic growth that is needed to create jobs (especially with a small and soon-to-be shrinking population), or: keep importing oil, while waiting for the vague promise of alternative energy, maybe, to become economically useful.

The Greens throughout Europe are imploding, bit by bit, as they encounter the real world.

posted by Mitch Berg 7/14/2002 02:23:19 PM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive